Dead Commentary

Why do we allow ghosts to tell us what to do?

Because the ghosts did too, while they still lived

They permitted the dead to linger in their minds

Animated by a fond, or frightened, imagination

Their ancestors looked on, with warm approval

Or withering scorn, at what they did and said and thought

Even wardrobe and diet fascinated some ghosts

Most were shameless voyeurs when they were naked

This contoured their deliberations

Their sense of what is subject to change, and what is eternal

What is right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or ugly

For they wished to avoid the wrath of the ghosts

And yearned to win their love and admiration

Thus, we learn that those of us who are alive

Are allowing those who no longer are

To call the shots

"What would [a dead person] say in a situation like this?"

"Would [a dead person] approve of this [outfit/lunch/mate/enemy]?"

"Would [a dead person] really mind if I had a [BLT/wank/friend with benefits/slave]?"

We allow the verdicts of those who are no longer vertical

Or to be more precise, what we think they would say

To shape our culture and the world it favors

In exchange for the warm and reassuring feelings

We derive from imagining what our dead ancestors

Parents, teachers, soldiers, prophets, tyrants, saints

Poets and philosophers are rare, but still hanging about

Athletes, coaches, musicians and actors have implausibly broad appeal

Writers and artists are really experts at hanging around in living minds

Often in character

Sometimes for their own sake

And sometimes for ours

What would they think of us now?

How is it, then, that we are perplexed

When we start letting synthetic ghosts proliferate

When the crude simulacra generated by learning machines

You know, "parasocial" relationships with shiny things

Made by things we made

To impress the dead

We wonder how bots can possibly weave the spell that they do

Over the lonesome and the desperate

We find the commentary of the dead

Impossible to ignore

And richly rewarding in terms of how it makes us feel

About who we are and how that came about

Ghosts that are puppets in the theater

Of our imaginations

Shape what we think and say and do

So too can fictions generated by mechanical plagiarists

We are used to being haunted

We seem to like it

Come to think of it

The ghosts make it easier to make decisions

Especially if they brook no discussion

We all know that only those who want obedience

Behave that way

We should choose our ghosts with care

We should select the ones that make us

Ready for life without them